News | What a nature-centered Europe can look like in 2050
Nature for society, nature as culture, or nature for nature – what will Europe look like in the year 2050? As part of the Horizon Europe-funded BIONEXT, European changemakers are exploring a new set of visions for nature-centered Europe for 2050. In a May workshop in Greece, stakeholders from different backgrounds such as research, policy, activism, and businesses, created scenarios and visions of what a nature-centered Europe looks like in the year 2050. So, what were the results?
What do we want Europe to look like in 2050?
The actual narratives that describe desirable futures for Europe in 2050 still are still a work in progress, but we can already present some elements from the visions that describe desirable futures. In total, the European changemakers created three different visions.
Firstly, the vision that focused on valuing Nature for Society describes a future in which Europeans develop a stronger appreciation for nature and its contribution to their well-being. This reconnection to nature results in a prosperous countryside with family farms pursuing more sustainable agriculture and a rewilding of post-agricultural areas. To facilitate this shift, the EU becomes more participatory and shifts its economic priority from GDP to a happiness index.
In contrast, the vision that focused on valuing Nature as Culture describes a future in which Europeans steward nature with respect, care, and local wisdom. This vision describes a landscape with diversified and small-scale agriculture using agroecological and other sustainable practices, more sustainable and equitable cities, and decentralized, place-specific renewable energy production. Various policy changes facilitate this shift in human-nature relations, such as giving legal rights to nature, promoting collective ownership, and reducing working hours. In this vision, the EU plays a role but has reconciled with its colonial past.
Image 1. In a May workshop in Greece, stakeholders created scenarios and visions of what a nature-centered Europe looks like in the year 2050.
Finally, the vision that focused on valuing Nature for Nature describes a future in which Europeans value nature for its inherent value. In this future, a large share of nature is left intact, and the remaining landscapes are managed sustainably. Water consumption is reduced and with no new dams or channels, and diets shift toward seasonal food, less meat, and locally grown products. This shift in human-nature relations is enabled by an EU that embraces the legal rights of nature, universal and responsible access to nature for all, and a more just distribution of wealth.
Exploring what might happen in the future
Creating such visions is not an easy task. Thus, the European changemakers created the visions with the help of scenarios. Scenarios are presented through plausible stories or narratives, and they describe drivers of change, but they are not predictions.
The changemakers built their visions with two kinds of scenarios guiding them: exploratory scenarios and normative (target-seeking) scenarios. Exploratory scenarios describe what might happen in the future. They explore uncertainties about how trajectories of different drivers of change may evolve in the future. The scenarios focus on drivers that are relevant to people and nature. The drivers can be for example attitudes toward sustainability, resource use, inequality, and investment in environmental protection.
“To become familiar with exploratory scenarios, the stakeholders interacted with existing scenarios called the shared socio-economic pathways”, explains Paula Harrison, professor at the UK Centre Ecology and Hydrology. “The stakeholders enriched the scenarios in terms of how the scenarios might affect the relationship between people and nature and what might happen to the environment and biodiversity up to the year 2100”, Professor Harrison says.
Image 2. To become familiar with exploratory scenarios, the stakeholders interacted with existing scenarios called the shared socio-economic pathways.
Describing the multiple futures that we want
The second type of scenario is the normative (target-seeking) scenario. These scenarios describe the future we want and how to move toward that future. To explore these scenarios, the European changemakers got familiarized with the Nature Futures Framework. The NFF is a triangular space with each of the corners representing one of the perspectives on nature: Nature for Nature, in which nature has value in and of itself; Nature for Society, in which nature is primarily valued for the benefits or uses people derive from it; and Nature as Culture (or One with Nature) in which humans are perceived as an integral part of nature.
“The Nature Futures Framework was used to understand the main themes that people want to see in a desirable future for people and nature. These themes covered for example the types of food and water systems, environment more generally, the economic and the governance systems, education, healthcare, wellbeing, and so on”, Professor Harrison says.
Working with the Nature Futures Framework also shows that there are plural visions for the future. “Not everybody has the same view of what a desirable future looks like, so we developed three different visions”, Professor Harrison says.
A group of diverse and talented stakeholders as brains for the visions
Identifying and getting the right stakeholders (also known as the European changemakers) was essential to create the visions. “It was crucial to have a diverse range of stakeholders since that affects the scenarios and visions we create”, Professor Harrison explains. In addition, the stakeholders will continue working with the visions for the next 3 years. For these reasons, the project mapped and identified the stakeholders carefully and criteria for the changemakers were set.
Image 3. The stakeholders represent different kinds of organizations such as policymaking, the business community, the research community, non-governmental organizations, and civil society.
Firstly, the project team ensured that the stakeholders’ backgrounds and expertise cover all seven elements of the biodiversity nexus: water, food, climate, energy, transport, health, and biodiversity. The biodiversity nexus demonstrates the diverse, intertwined relationships between people and nature. It shows how our resource use affects nature and biodiversity and vice versa. Secondly, the stakeholders represent different kinds of organizations such as policymaking (national governance and the EU level), the business community, the research community, non-governmental organizations, and civil society. Furthermore, minority groups and youth are represented.
The visions were created in a workshop that took place from 4 to 5 May 2023 in Greece. The project team will continue the analysis of the visions which will result in more detailed descriptions of the futures the European changemakers want. In addition, the project will, later on, identify just pathways to sustainable societies based on these visions, so, stay tuned!
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